Please Help-new HS coach needing advice

[Grandstand]

New coach wanting advice on off-season baseball ideas and schedules. I'm looking to build a competitive HS team and want to use best practices of established successful programs. I do not have an even semi-pro baseball resume. But i do love the game and want to help my team and players to the best of my ability.

I am eager to change the process of the past where I coach and would be ever appreciative if some of you would share your off-season plans and schedules. How long do you actually run the off-season program? What exactly are you looking to improve during the off-season?

We have a very minimal off-season plan it doesn't seem to actually accomplish much. Thanks

[TryNotToSuck]

On 7/13/2020 at 9:26 AM, Grandstand said:

New coach wanting advice on off-season baseball ideas and schedules. I'm looking to build a competitive HS team and want to use best practices of established successful programs. I do not have an even semi-pro baseball resume. But i do love the game and want to help my team and players to the best of my ability.

I am eager to change the process of the past where I coach and would be ever appreciative if some of you would share your off-season plans and schedules. How long do you actually run the off-season program? What exactly are you looking to improve during the off-season?

We have a very minimal off-season plan it doesn't seem to actually accomplish much. Thanks

I'll be glad to give you my 0.02 on how I would operate a baseball team. First, I would get in the weight room as much as possible, and limit hitting (not throwing). If you have an instagram account, there are tons of workouts that you can do to the players. I think the weight room is a necessity that many teams aren't really committed to. It's a "pro" to a player that might want to lose/gain weight and be able to throw harder (pitchers use lower half of body) and hitters increasing bat speed and hit the ball even further. However, that's based on facilities and access to weight rooms. Secondly, I would like to throw softballs when it comes to throwing. It's a heavier ball that's not a "weighted ball" but it also gets the players' hands to wrap around the ball. That's something that's different because a lot of teams would use baseballs and long distance. Throw 2-3 times a week, and let them throw with baseball in one of those days per week. 

You have to mix things up and make it fun to the players. If players aren't playing summer ball, then they're not playing a game from May-February (8/9 months). Baseball has obviously a long offseason. I'll be honest, I wouldn't focus much on hitting really til December, and start throwing bullpens in November with 15-20 Max pens. January will be 30, and February will be 45-50 max bullpens.

Everybody is different, every coach is different. Some love to get in the weight room in July (at my school we don't start til after Labor Day). Let the players play football (they play for the school) and golf (fun sport to play). If your offseason is boring, then players will miss Friday's and go home. I hope this helps!

[cbg]

A once very successful high school coach from Florida (multiple state championships) gave me his philosophy and plan over a few adult beverages one evening.  

1.  He encouraged all of his players to be multi sport athletes because he did not want burnout  

2.  He ran 2 high school summer league teams.  Kids that were on the varsity but did not start during the high school season had to play on the top school summer league team.   JV and all 8th graders that were going to be freshmen played on the 2nd tier summer league team.  He did say that on a couple of occasions he moved an incoming 8th grader up the top top tier summer league team because he could tell that they had the talent to start or be a major contributor on the varsity the following season.  Every kid that started was allowed to play on one of 3 top tier summer league teams that traveled the country.  

3.  The team had mandatory strength & conditioning at 8:00am Monday-Thursday.  He didn't care if they didn't get home from an out of town tournament until 1:00am they had to be at the strength training at 8:00am.  If someone was late to practice, games or strength training they had to do an extra workout on Friday morning at 8:00am.  

4.  He felt that you should play as many games as allowed during the high school season and play against the very best competition.  Don't be afraid  to take a loss as it will make you have a better tournament team.

5.  He would schedule 8 JV games per week.  He would get the lower level varsity teams in the area to play his JV team and they would call it a JV game.  One thing that he did say was that to get coaches to do this he had to pay for the umpires and furnish the game balls.  

6.  You must develop a pitching staff in high school and the only way to do that is to work with the kids.  He felt that you must have 8 solid arms to win a state championship so he found 8 kids that could and would throw strikes.  He hardly ever allowed his starting pitcher to go more than 4 innings or 75 pitches.  He liked the idea of giving the team a different look (pitcher) every time they have an AB. 

7.  He typically placed his very best athletes at catcher.  Like he said you win championships with pitching and catching.  A good high school catcher is able to switch positions at the next level and be successful.  He used 2 catchers during the season and they would never catch back to back games.  He would place them in another position when they were not behind the plate.  

 

I know this is out of the box thinking for Tennessee but I hope that it helps you.